Twenty heavily armed federal agents pulled in behind Montana’s Highwood Creek Outfitters’ owner Tom Van Hoose as he arrived at his shop Wednesday morning, KRTV reported.
“We have a reputation of dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s because there’s so much legal fun to be had,” said Van Hoose. “It’s just not worth doing things that are going to get you in trouble.”
The IRS CID troops took ten hours to copy the information on his computers and download his point of sale software information. But what Van Hoose says really concerns him is the fact that in addition to his accounting and sales records, the agents confiscated 13 years of 4473 forms and copied his firearm acquisition and disposition book.
Anyone who’s ever completed a 4473 form knows there’s no revenue or financial data there. That form is a record of a firearm purchase transaction used to facilitate a NICS background check and potentially trace a gun’s ownership down the road if it’s used in a crime. Gun dealers are required to keep those forms for at least 20 years.
The question then is, why would the IRS want customer transaction information? Van Hoose says the 4473 forms were not included on the list of financial records specifically listed on the warrant the IRS agents served him during the raid. Yet they took them anyway.
According to a news release from U.S. Representative Matt Rosenadale (R-MT), the IRS confiscated all the 4473 forms from the store. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms website, generally, the forms must be completed at licensed business premises when a firearm is transferred.
As an aside we learn this info.
So here we go….. OMB sticking their finger in gun control. Thank the House GOP. The Office of Management and Budget has provided emergency authorization to ATF to immediately use the revised Form 4473. ATF will be publishing the Revised Form for Notice and Comment Review in the coming months.
Notice Regarding Recent Changes to the ATF Form 4473
Due to new statutory requirements set forth in both the NICS Denial Notification Act and the Bipartisan Safer Community Act (BSCA), and to reflect the implementation of ATF Final Rule 2021R-05F, ATF Form 4473 has been revised. Because the new statutory requirements are designed to enhance public safety, and to ensure compliance with these provisions and Final Rule 2021R-05F, the Office of Management and Budget has provided emergency authorization to ATF to immediately use the revised Form 4473. ATF will be publishing the Revised Form for Notice and Comment Review in the coming months.
ATF encourages all federal firearms licensees (FFLs) to begin using the Revised Form immediately. The Revised Form is available on ATF’s website, and can be downloaded and printed for immediate use. Please note that the entire Form, including instructions, must be printed, and stored together. Hard copies of the Revised Form will be available through the ATF Distribution Center beginning February 1, 2023. The ATF eForm 4473 application is also being revised and notification will be sent when it is ready for use.
IRS agents confiscated background check forms from the store that contained sensitive personal information about all customers who ever purchased a gun at the shop. The forms do not include financial information, Rosendale said, calling the act an “egregious breach of privacy” that “showed no regard for federal law.”
The danger of federal agents taking this information was not lost on AG Knudsen, who told Breitbart News, “I spoke with the shop owner who told me that 20 heavily armed IRS agents from multiple states in our region served a warrant before his business opened.
They took dozens of boxes full of 4473s — more than a decade’s worth. This is extremely concerning because it seemingly exceeds the search warrant which limited the scope of the search to financial records. These aren’t financial records, they’re records of lawful firearm purchases. What the hell does the IRS need with 4473s? We know the ATF in Washington, DC is trying to scoop up as many of these purchase records as possible, and that’s what it looks like they’re trying to do here.”
“There is no circumstance in which 4473s would be necessary in an investigation spearheaded by the IRS,” Rosendale said in a letter addressed to ATF Director Steven Dettelbach and IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel.
Read more at Breitbart.
and what this is all about at Truth about Guns
Is this going to be the new pattern of abuse? Is the IRS going to harass all the gun purchasers made from this Montana store as they did to the Tea Party?
The best of the swamp.
Almost $1 billion each year goes to state wildlife and natural resource agencies courtesy of checks written by firearms, ammunition, and related manufacturers. It is the result of an 11 percent excise tax on firearms, ammunition, and related goods known as Pittman-Robertson, or the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937.
BUNKERVILLE | God, Guns and Guts Comrades! 